[ On Friday 23 July 1999, Nora Wall was sentenced to life imprisonment on bogus charges of raping a child. Many people are aware that the tabloid press published a series of obscene attacks on the former Sister Dominic. It is not so widely known that 'The Irish Times' led the pack. The following story was published on the very next day by our great liberal newspaper. It features Gerry Kelly who was a founding member of the victims' group "Alliance".

This was not Gerry Kelly's only involvement in the saga of Nora Wall. Following Wall's conviction, he attempted to get a "close family friend" of his to make ANOTHER rape allegation against the former Sister of Mercy. This attempt come to a sudden end after the collapse of the case against Nora Wall. [1]

Moreover on Louis Lentin's TV documentary "Our Boy's", (first broadcast in October 1999) Gerry Kelly claimed that, while he was at Artane, he had attended the funerals of boys who had been beaten to death by the Christian Brothers. No boy died of any cause while Gerry Kelly was at Artane. [2]

Also in April 2002 Gerry Kelly physically confronted the Papal Nuncio and three bishops after a bishops' meeting in Maynooth. [3]

Did 'The Irish Times' make the slightest effort to check Gerry Kelly's credibility. Or did they just assume that, because Nora Wall had been convicted, they could get away with anything?

A former resident of St Michael's Child Care centre in Cappoquin witnessed an extraordinary scene involving Nora Wall when he returned there as an adult. Mr Gerry Kelly says that in 1979 he saw Wall, then Sr Dominic, in bed with another nun at the centre. He says he was invited by the nuns to join them.

Mr Kelly, who had previously been physically and sexually abused at the Artane Industrial School run by the Christian Brothers in Dublin, did not experience or witness any sexual abuse at St Michael's, where he lived for six years from the age of 11 in 1969.

However, while his life improved, he has only bad memories of Wall, who was yesterday given a life sentence for the rape of a 10-year-old girl at the centre.
Mr Kelly first encountered Sister Dominic when she taught him Irish and religion at St Anne's Secondary School.

"She was always telling me I was stupid, I was a dunce, I'd never be any good, and not to be disrupting the class."

Beatings by her, he says, were routine. "She'd come and stand beside your desk and ask you a question, knowing you wouldn't have the answer. Then she'd hit you a box or she'd catch you by the locks of your hair and lift you out of your desk." She also kicked him on two occasions.

At St Michael's, he had no direct contact with Wall who, after he left in 1975, ran the home known as Cois Ceim, one of two bungalows which make up the childcare centre.

Four years after leaving, he returned for the funeral of a young man who had grown up in the centre and who had died in an accident. Mr Kelly says that after the funeral a number of people were invited back to Cois Ceim where Wall and some of those present began drinking heavily. He was a non-drinker at the time. At about 8 p.m. he was invited by someone present - he cannot remember who - to go to Wall's bedroom.

"To my horror I discovered Sister Dominic in bed with another nun . . . I was asked to join in."

The invitation, he said, was extended by the nuns themselves. Asked if he could have misconstrued what was taking place, he added: "Well, they had nothing on them and they were kissing one another and fondling one another. Could I possibly have misconstrued that?"

Mr Kelly said he left the room immediately and two hours later reported what he had seen to the nun who had been in charge of St Michael's during his time there, Mother Mercy.

Mother Mercy, who is now dead, told him she would deal with the matter and asked him not to tell anyone. Mr Kelly is a founder member of the Alliance for the Healing of Victims of Institutional Abuse, and was a member of a delegation which met the Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, and the Minister for Education, Mr Martin, last month.